Standard equipment for police officers typically includes a sidearm (pistol) and a baton. Police officers frequently have to confront miscreants willing and able to launch assaults on officers that have only drawn their batons. Often police officers sustain serious injury or even death from such assaults. Yet, if the assailants are unarmed, mentally ill, or enraged by a domestic situation, using lethal force by shooting them often results in public backlash. However, reluctance to use the force necessary to subdue such violent assailants risks harm to police. Even if such assailants are armed with knives, broken bottles, and the like, use of the more lethal force of a pistol shot to subdue them may result in censure and lawsuits.
Quelling rioters is another situation where police use of firearms is unacceptable, even though some may attempt to goad police into using lethal force, hoping to create martyrs that will further their cause.
It would be a major benefit to law enforcement if police officers had a weapon of intermediate lethality, i.e., more lethal than a baton, but less lethal than a firearm. Such a weapon should require little maintenance, require minimum training, be inexpensive, highly portable, and at all times immediately at hand.